Arab Spring

[smc]

Continued:

I want to make a very important point. Zionism and Judaism are not the same. In my opinion, Zionism is actually the primary creator of anti-Semitism in the world today, though, by having successfully created the illusion in the minds of most people that they are the same. I will explain in a moment. First, some facts.

Israel?s founding is justified as a response to the horrors of the Nazi holocaust against the Jews. But here?s a fact: the Zionists frequently collaborated with fascism. In 1933, the Zionist Federation of Germany sent the Nazi Party a memorandum of support that read, in part: ?On the foundation of the new [Nazi] state which has established the principle of race, we wish to fit our community into the total structure so that for us, too, in the sphere assigned to us, fruitful activity for the Fatherland is possible.?

One could argue that this was a survival move, but the truth is that while Jews fought the Nazis in underground armies and in the Warsaw Ghetto over the next years, Zionists did not.

Also in 1933, the congress of the World Zionist Organization defeated a resolution for action against Hitler. The vote was 240 to 43.

Joseph Goebbels wrote several articles praising Zionism. The Nazis funded some Zionist leaders. In 1937, a member of the Haganah, a Zionist militia in Palestine, delivered the following message to the German SS: ?Jewish nationalist circles ... were very pleased with the radical German policy, since the strength of the Jewish population in Palestine would be so far increased thereby that in the foreseeable future the Jews could reckon upon numerical superiority over the Arabs.?

The Zionist movement in the United States, and Britain openly opposed changes in the immigration laws that would have permitted more Jews to find refuge in those countries. The rationale? The fewer other places Jews could flee to, the more likely they would go to Palestine. If more Jews died in the process, so what! In 1938, future Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion wrote: ?If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael [greater Israel], then I would opt for the second alternative.?

As Jewish organizations in Western Europe and the United States in the late 1930s and early 1940s cried out for help, for public campaigns, for organized resistance, for demonstrations to force the hand of the allied governments to stem the tide of Hitler?s Jewish extermination (which the West was aware of), the Zionists were silent. They sabotaged efforts to save Jews from Hitler. They did not want to rock the boat of the countries that supported converting Palestine to a colonial-settler state for Jews.

Meanwhile, the British colonial regime gave Jews in Palestine privileged status over the indigenous Palestinian Arabs. Jewish capital got 90 percent of all economic concessions. Jews were paid higher wages than Arabs for equal work. This had begun in the 1920s. The British used Jewish settlers to help suppress mass demonstrations by Arabs against landlessness (sales of their homes by absentee landlords, and forced expulsions) and unemployment. From 1936 to 1939, there was a sustained Palestinian uprising, including a general strike that lasted several months. The British relied on Zionist militias to execute leaders and help round up thousands for imprisonment. Thousands of Arab homes were physically demolished, and then the Zionists would step in and stake a ?claim? to the then-unoccupied land.

After World War II, the Brits had to leave Palestine; the UK was tremendously weakened by the war. The other leading powers, including the United States and the Soviet Union, decided to partition the country into separate Jewish and Palestinian section. The Jews at the time were 31 percent of the population; they were given 54 percent of the fertile land. But the Zionist acceptance of this was just to play along, and those who sponsored them knew it. Ben-Gurion had written, in 1938: ?The boundaries of Zionist aspiration include southern Lebanon, southern Syria, today?s Jordan, all of Cis-Jordan [the West Bank] and the Sinai. .... After we become a strong force as the result of the creation of the state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine. The state will only be a stage in the realization of Zionism and its task is to prepare the ground for our expansion. The state will have to preserve order ... with machine guns.

Well, how do you accomplish that? You?d have to expel the Arabs, by force if necessary. Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency?s Colonization Department, wrote in 1940: ?There is no room for both peoples together in this country ... We shall not achieve our goal of being an independent people with the Arabs in this small country ... And there is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries. To transfer all of them; not one village, not one tribe should be left.

The ?Koenig Report,? a Zionist document of the time, was even more direct: ?We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.?

I ask ila, in the context of what he wrote, do the Arabs, who also trace the ?common ancestry back to Abraham,? have any claim on the land of Palestine?

[TO BE CONTINUED]

[smc]

Continued:

Even if none of what I wrote about the Zionists and what they did in Palestine up to and including the World War II period were true, what they did after the war, particularly beginning in late 1947 and especially in 1948, would be enough to characterize the Zionist state as illegitimate. Then, Zionist forces seized three-quarters of the land and expelled close to 1 million Palestinians. Paramilitary groups such as the Irgun and the Haganah carried out massacres. I personally have Palestinian friends whose parents and grandparents were awakened in the middle of the night by Zionists soldiers and forced, at gun point, to flee their homes. One of my friends carries the key to her family?s house around her neck; the house is still there, just outside Hebron (in the West Bank), lived in since 1948 by the same Zionist family.

By the way, future Israeli prime ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir were leaders of these paramilitary groups, which were as much terrorist groups as anything the West typically reserves that term for today.

Massacres, you may ask. Yes, indeed. There was a famous one in the small Palestinian Arab village of Deir Yassin. Menachem Begin was there to help murder 254 men, women, and children, and steal their land. Later, Begin wrote, in celebration of what had been accomplished: ?All in the Jewish forces proceeded to advance through Haifa like a knife through butter. The Arabs began fleeing in panic, shouting ?Deir Yassin?.?

The official Israeli Defense Forces carried out other massacres. About Dueima, another Palestinian Arab village, an IDF soldier actually wrote about what he was an eyewitness to (and later regretted): ?They killed between eighty to one hundred Arab men, women and children. To kill the children they fractured their heads with sticks. There was not one home without corpses. ... Educated and well-mannered commanders who were considered ?good guys? ... became base murderers, and this not in the storm of battle, but as a method of expulsion and extermination.?

Close to 500 Palestinian villages existed in the territory that came under Israeli occupation after partition in 1947. During 1948 and 1949, nearly 400 of them were razed to the ground. More were destroyed in the 1950s. In 1969, Moshe Dayan, former chief of staff and minister of defense, summarized: ?We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs, and we are building here a Hebrew, Jewish state. Instead of Arab villages, Jewish villages were established ... There is not a single [Jewish] settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab village.?

So, Israel was established with massacres and land grabs. What about the old story that the Zionists had no choice because the survival of the new state was threatened by hostile Arab neighbors? It?s true that there were some military clashes with neighboring countries in 1948, as those countries took small (and largely fruitless actions) meant to look as if they were defending the Palestinians. The rulers of those countries saw an opportunity: the existence of a colonial-settler state in the midst of the Arab world would divert the attention of the Arab masses away from their oppressors in their own countries -- that is, the ruling despots. That would serve the despots interests, which is why the key Arab governments accepted Israel?s founding and were already in negotiation with the new Israeli government.

The ?security? argument for Israel?s continued land grabs has always been a fraud. Moshe Sharett, an Israeli prime minister in the 1950s, wrote as much in his memoirs. He states that the Zionist political and military leadership never believed in any Arab danger to Israel, but that Israel deliberately tried to maneuver and force the Arab states into military confrontations the Israelis were certain the Zionists could precisely so that Israel could destabilize Arab regimes and occupy more territory. Sharrett wrote that Israel?s aim has always been to ?dismember the Arab world, defeat the Arab national movement and create puppet regimes under regional Israeli power? and ?to modify the balance of power in the region radically, transforming Israel into the major power in the Middle East.?

So much for a protective homeland for Jews fleeing anti-Semitism. This, though, explains why the United States backs Israel with more foreign aid than any other country. An Israel that does what Sharett explains serves the interests of the U.S. rulers tremendously. If they have to couch their support for Israel in the language of fighting anti-Semitism, that?s fine.

Before 1947, Jews owned about 6 percent of the land in Palestine. In the process of establishing the State of Israel, the Zionists expropriated 90 percent of the land, the vast majority of which formerly belonged to Arabs. They emptied whole cities of their Palestinian Arab population. They seized factories, rolling stock, orchards, and houses. This is, and continues to be, ethnic cleansing.

Then, to bolster the population, Israel established the ?The Law of Return.? I am a Jew, born in the United States. I am an American citizen. Yet, I can get on a plane to Tel Aviv tomorrow and declare myself an Israeli citizen, a citizen of a land to which I have no claim and no connection other than a supposed Biblical one. My friend Lana, the woman who wears the key around her neck (see above), is also an American citizen. She was born of Palestinian parents who fled to the United States from a refugee camp. Her family are Christians; there are quite a few Christian Palestinian Arabs. Were she to fly with me, she would get off in Tel Aviv and have no such right to claim her citizenship. When she visits her family still in the West Bank, she has to avoid Israel altogether, entering via Jordan and then enduring checkpoint after checkpoint after checkpoint, and humiliation after humiliation after humiliation.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

[smc]

Continued:

After the Six Day War in 1967, Israel occupied further territory including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Some 55 percent of the West Bank land and 70 percent of the water were seized for Jewish settlers, a tiny fraction of the population. In Gaza, 500,000 Palestinians were confined to camps and slums; 2,200 settlers were given more than 40 percent of the land.

I say it again: Israel is an illegitimate state with no right to exist.

Let me end by coming back to my earlier point that Zionism is actually the primary creator of anti-Semitism in the world today. Here?s how I mean that.

The Zionists, aided by the powers in other countries that benefit from the geopolitical role Israel plays that has nothing to do with Jews and Judaism, have perpetrated a tremendous fraud. They have succeeded in equating, in the minds of most of the world?s people, two things that are antithetical: Zionism and Judaism.

Zionism is a political ideology. Judaism is a religion. By its acts, Zionism has demonstrated that it is a ruthless, murdering, colonizing ideology put forth for political power. The central tenet of the Jewish religion is to heal the world.

But the Zionists are smart. At every juncture, throughout their history but especially since the Palestine project began, they have publicly equated opposition to their political ideology as opposition to Judaism. Say something long enough and loud enough, and have powerful allies in your project (especially the United States and the U.S. media, which almost never reports honestly about Israel), and soon enough you?ll have the world believing your lie.

And so, by equating Zionism and Judaism, the Zionists have ensured that generations of Palestinian Arab youth have grown up making this mistake. That is why the Hamas-run television station in Gaza runs children?s programs that are so virulently anti-Semitic. It?s not because Palestinian Arabs are anti-Semitic per se, but because there is a false equivalency that has been constructed. To the person who is living in a refugee camp, oppressed by the Israeli state, Judaism and Zionism have become one and the same. The Zionists maintain this falsehood at whatever cost. Criticize Zionism, and you are labeled an anti-Semite. Hell, they even have created the notion of the ?self-hating Jew? to characterize Jews like myself who are opposed to Zionism.

I could go into tremendous detail about this phenomenon, but I think it speaks for itself.

[randolph]

SMC

As Jewish organizations in Western Europe and the United States in the late 1930s and early 1940s cried out for help, for public campaigns, for organized resistance, for demonstrations to force the hand of the allied governments to stem the tide of Hitler?s Jewish extermination (which the West was aware of), the Zionists were silent. They sabotaged efforts to save Jews from Hitler. They did not want to rock the boat of the countries that supported converting Palestine to a colonial-settler state for Jews.

This is a very interesting account of Zionism and Israel. However, I find the above quote, from the account, very difficult to believe.

[smc]

Originally Posted by randolph

SMC


This is a very interesting account of Zionism and Israel. However, I find the above quote, from the account, very difficult to believe.

Wow, of everything I wrote, that's all you pick out?!

I will clarify: I mean the official Zionist organizations and their leaderships. In the context of their singular determination on establishing a Zionist colonial-settler state in Palestine, the persecution of Jews served a purpose. They believed it would compel emigrants to choose Palestine.

I will give a specific example, too. In 1937, Jews were streaming out of Germany. American Jewish organizations (non-Zionist) asked Roosevelt to allow more refugees into the United States. At first, he suggested they be "resettled" anywhere but the United States, suggesting Venezuela, Ethiopia, West Africa, and Palestine. In 1940, only 22,000 German refugees were admitted to the United States, and not all of them were Jewish.

Famously, in 1939, Roosevelt's State Department refused entry of a passenger ship loaded with Jews who were fleeing Hitler's Germany. The ship had left from Hamburg, Germany. The original plan was for this ship to land in Cuba and then have the refugees apply for U.S. asylum. But there was a problem landing in Cuba. From off the coast of Florida, telegrams were sent by passengers to the U.S. State Department, requesting U.S. asylum. The requests were spurned -- and historians have unearthed that the American Zionist Organization lobbied Roosevelt heavily to refuse. The Zionists figured that if the ship had to turn back, it could be convinced to go to Palestine.

Rescuing these Jews was secondary to the desire for colonial settlement in the Palestinian Arab lands, which required Jewish bodies! Forget that German U-Boats might have sunk the ship on its return voyage across the Atlantic and through the Mediterranean!

The ship ended up returning to Antwerp, after other countries interceded. But few survivors of the voyage could be found after World War II. Why? They died in concentration camps.

The shameful record of the American Zionists with respect to the St. Louis are completely buried at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Reading the record there, you would think that the passengers all lived happily ever after!

[randolph]

Originally Posted by randolph

SMC


This is a very interesting account of Zionism and Israel. However, I find the above quote, from the account, very difficult to believe.

I just read an article in Dissident Voice by William Martin that confirms everything SMC has said. The article goes further outlining the collaboration between Zionists in Palestine and Germany to get German products past the German embargo. I knew the Zionists were a radical bunch of fanatics but I had no idea how ruthless they were and quite willing to pursue the goal of a Jewish state by ignoring the holocaust.
"Lenni Brenner puts it:
… of all of the active Jewish opponents of the boycott idea [of Nazi Germany], the most important was the world Zionists Organization (WZO). It not only bought German wares; it sold them, and even sought out new customers for Hitler and his industrialist backers."


Thanks SMC for bringing out the horrible truth about Zionism.

[smc]

Originally Posted by randolph

I just read an article in Dissident Voice by William Martin that confirms everything SMC has said. The article goes further outlining the collaboration between Zionists in Palestine and Germany to get German products past the German embargo. I knew the Zionists were a radical bunch of fanatics but I had no idea how ruthless they were and quite willing to pursue the goal of a Jewish state by ignoring the holocaust.
"Lenni Brenner puts it:
? of all of the active Jewish opponents of the boycott idea [of Nazi Germany], the most important was the world Zionists Organization (WZO). It not only bought German wares; it sold them, and even sought out new customers for Hitler and his industrialist backers."


Thanks SMC for bringing out the horrible truth about Zionism.

Is it any wonder, then, that the Zionists became so adept at applying the well-honed Nazi concept of collective guilt? Or that in the Second Intifada, they captured young boys who threw rocks at the occupier's tanks and systematically broke their hands, smashing them so they could never be used again? Or that at the same time they speak of "peace" they build settlements in newly stolen lands?

I support the dismantling of the Israeli state and I support the original slogan of the Palestine Liberation Organization for a "democratic, secular Palestine of Jews and Arabs living together." But even for those who support a two-state solution, and believe Israel has any interest in "peace" with its colonized, dispossessed, expelled Palestinian Arabs, I submit to you the following thoughts.

The Israeli settlement policy is a deliberate and cynical rejection of "peace" and any Palestinian state. It speaks to the ultimate objection, the Israeli's "final solution" (if you will): the complete dispossession of the Palestinians until they have absolutely nothing left. Even if you accept the claim of the pre-1967 territory as needed as a homeland for the Jews, nothing of the sort can be said of the post-1967 settlements. They are a land grab for cheap housing. They are payback for the support of evangelicals (who figure tremendously in keeping the American aid dollars flowing to pay for the Israeli Defense Forces and everything else in Israel). And they are simply an expression of the true face of Zionism and its criminal approach to the indigenous people of Palestine. They are about meting out continued suffering and deprivation.

The Zionists, with the help of the U.S. government and media, always try to stake out the high moral ground. This from a political movement that expresses its true ideology by halting ambulances on the way to take wounded civilians to hospitals, deliberately messy air strikes claimed to be "surgical," uprooting orchards and olive groves that pose no security threat (but that represent meager subsistence for the owners), destroying the water supply to the West Bank, curfews that make it nearly impossible for Palestinians to hold down jobs, warehousing food shipments from international aid organizations long enough to ensure that the food spoils ... I could go on and on.

Is it any wonder that young people growing up under such circumstances can be so easily persuaded to strap bombs to themselves and get on buses in Tel Aviv?

Whenever you see a U.S. television report about the civilian neighborhood in Israel, just beyond the Gaza border, that took a rocket from Hamas, remember that those people were placed in a war zone precisely so when they got bombed the cynical Zionists could shout about how the barbarian Palestinians fire on civilians. Meanwhile, count the civilian deaths in Gaza from deliberate bombings of apartment buildings, bombings allegedly to kill one Hamas leader at the expense of dozens of men, women, and children relegated to live there because their family homes were stolen at the point of gun!

Judaism's central tenet is תיקון עולם -- tikkun olam, healing or repairing the world. It is completely antithetical to Zionism, which usurps Judaism for destructive, criminal, murderous political purposes.

[randolph]

Historically, most population groups such as European countries, religions and tribes consider protecting their own people a top priority. Wars are fought to protect their people from invaders. Not so with the Zionists, the only thing that mattered to them was establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. They even colluded with the archenemy of Jews, the Nazis, to foster the establishment of a Jewish state.
It appears that a lot of the younger Israelis are getting fed up with the Zionist paradigm. Dissension within Israel will add to the instability sweeping across the Middle East. Islamists are making every effort to capitalize on the instability. Israel has no friends but us and their enemies are gaining more power and support. Are we going to defend Israel to the last?

I am totally appalled and shocked at what the Zionists did and are still doing. It is amazing how poorly informed we are about the state of Israel.

[ila]

Originally Posted by smc

Continued:

...I ask ila, in the context of what he wrote, do the Arabs, who also trace the ?common ancestry back to Abraham,? have any claim on the land of Palestine?

[TO BE CONTINUED]

smc, there are too many posts to reply properly to everything you written so I am only quoting one part of one post, but will reply in general to what you have written.

One can support the presence of Israel and Judaism without supporting Zionism.

To answer the quote, yes, the arabs do have a claim to the land where Israel exists. To properly understand the whole situation one must delve into the history of that area. The kingdoms of Israel and Judah existed from approximately 900 BC. Before that there were the areas of the twelve tribes of Israel which occupied the land from approximately modern day Lebanon and Syria where they border modern day Israel south to the Sinai and east into modern Jordan.

If one believes the Bible then the Jews occupied part of this area before going to Egypt and then returning after the exodus from Egypt. In the meantime Canaanites, Moabites, and Edomites (to name just three peoples) occupied the area and were still there when the Israelites returned (and probably there when the Israelites first lived in the area. It should also be noted that Israel and Judah were not homogenously Jewish.

The Canaanites, Moabites, and Israelites are Semitic people and spoke Semitic languages. It is quite possible that the arabs (Palestinians) are descendants of the Moabites, the Canaanite, and the Edomites as well as others. Note that I have no evidence for the preceding statement. It is purely a guess on my part as the Moabites are direct descendants of Abraham through Lot and his son Moab. As well Palestinians are a Semitic people and Arabic is a Semitic language. Therefore because all these people lived in the area then the Jews and the Palestinians have a claim to the land where Israel currently exists.

There is a theory that there was no exodus of Jews from Egypt, but rather that the Jews were always in the area of Israel and eventually differentiated themselves from others living in the area mainly through the belief in one god, Yaweh.

smc, I have a lot more to add so if we are going to continue this discussion it should be in a separate thread as we are coming close to completely derailing randolph?s original intent. Or better yet we should continue this discussion in person sharing a bottle of Jameson?s and indulging in some good draught beer.

[randolph]

Ila

smc, I have a lot more to add so if we are going to continue this discussion it should be in a separate thread as we are coming close to completely derailing randolph?s original intent. Or better yet we should continue this discussion in person sharing a bottle of Jameson?s and indulging in some good draught beer

.

Ila, please continue the discussion, it is very interesting and it is related to the Arab Spring.

[smc]

Originally Posted by randolph

Ila, please continue the discussion, it is very interesting and it is related to the Arab Spring.

I completely agree. The uprising of the Arab masses against their oppressive governments is intimately linked to the presence of the Zionist state in their midst. Israel has played as much of a role in keeping the Arab masses quiet for decades as have the Arab governments themselves ... a point I think I infer.

So, ila, while I agree that a bottle of Jameson would be an excellent accompaniment, there's no reason we can't discuss here as well.

Originally Posted by ila

smc, there are too many posts to reply properly to everything you written so I am only quoting one part of one post, but will reply in general to what you have written.

One can support the presence of Israel and Judaism without supporting Zionism. ...

I am addressing only one of your points. I completely disagree with what you write above about "support ... without supporting Zionism."

The state of Israel has existed for a long time, now. The repressive apparatus is firmly entrenched. The settlements exist. This is not an abstract question of Moabites and Canaanites. It is a concrete political question of the 21st century.

The first steps have to be a) dismantling all of the settlements on post-1967 lands, b) tearing down the barrier wall between Israel and the West Bank, c) guaranteeing the free movement of anyone throughout the territory (which means opening the "circular roads" to Palestinians; I can explain what these are if anyone asks) and d) establishing the right of return for all Palestinians. The latter means acknowledging the Palestinian claim on every home, factory, orchard, grove, and plot of land. It is true that given the Palestinian diaspora, many if not most will not choose to return, but they have a legal claim that should be settled with compensation. Let the U.S. aid go to that instead of Israeli nuclear weapons!

A democratic, secular Palestine is a prerequisite to peace. Not a two-state solution. The thing about legitimate nationalist claims to usurped land is that while they may ebb and flow with respect to their intensity, even from generation to generation, but human history shows that they seem to live on in national groups almost like a gene. Even with a two-state solution, that key around the neck of my friend Lana will live on, and some day one of her children or children's children will want to know why the house was stolen, and the next thing you know the struggle will be renewed. That's why a democratic, secular Palestine -- absent Zionism -- with Arabs and Jews living together is the only answer.

I believe Palestine goes from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, not some carved up faux country that is non-contiguous, jerry-rigged by a colonizer and designed to maintain oppression long after the question of statehood has been "settled."

[randolph]

SMC

The state of Israel has existed for a long time, now. The repressive apparatus is firmly entrenched. The settlements exist. This is not an abstract question of Moabites and Canaanites. It is a concrete political question of the 21st century.

How the state of Israel became a reality is a very interesting story. It goes back to the establishment of a British mandate over Palestine after WWI. The British were pro Arab for economic reasons involving their interests in the Near East (Suez Canal, etc). Arab unrest was a serious concern of the British. Immigration of thousands of Jewish refugees from Europe presented Britain with a real dilemma. Britain attempted to restrict movement to Palestine for fear of causing more problems with the Arabs. At the same time they did not want more Jewish refugees coming into England.
They even forbid Palestinians from offering ransom to the Nazis to allow immigration of German Jews.

[smc]

Originally Posted by randolph

SMC

How the state of Israel became a reality is a very interesting story. It goes back to the establishment of a British mandate over Palestine after WWI. The British were pro Arab for economic reasons involving their interests in the Near East (Suez Canal, etc). Arab unrest was a serious concern of the British. Immigration of thousands of Jewish refugees from Europe presented Britain with a real dilemma. Britain attempted to restrict movement to Palestine for fear of causing more problems with the Arabs. At the same time they did not want more Jewish refugees coming into England.
They even forbid Palestinians from offering ransom to the Nazis to allow immigration of German Jews.

But then the Brits figured out that establishing a "beachhead" in the region served their economic interests in the ways I explained above, which is why they supported the partition and ultimately the establishment of the Zionist state.

[ila]

Originally Posted by smc

[FONT="Times New Roman"] I completely agree. The uprising of the Arab masses against their oppressive governments is intimately linked to the presence of the Zionist state in their midst. Israel has played as much of a role in keeping the Arab masses quiet for decades as have the Arab governments themselves ... a point I think I infer.

Are you serious that Israel caused the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt?

Originally Posted by smc

So, ila, while I agree that a bottle of Jameson would be an excellent accompaniment, there's no reason we can't discuss here as well.

You know that I don?t live around the corner from so I couldn't seriously be trying to move the discussion away from this site.

Originally Posted by smc

I am addressing only one of your points. I completely disagree with what you write above about "support ... without supporting Zionism."

The state of Israel has existed for a long time, now. The repressive apparatus is firmly entrenched. The settlements exist. This is not an abstract question of Moabites and Canaanites. It is a concrete political question of the 21st century.

To dismiss the Moabites, the Canaanites, the Edomites, etc. as abstract is to ignore the history of the whole region. One cannot properly put everything into the context of today?s problems without first understanding the past.

Palestinians and Jews have lived in the area of Israel/Palestine for millennia. This article gives insight to their lineage. Given that they both have a record of continuously living there for so long why should Jews not be allowed to live there?

Originally Posted by smc

The first steps have to be a) dismantling all of the settlements on post-1967 lands, b) tearing down the barrier wall between Israel and the West Bank, c) guaranteeing the free movement of anyone throughout the territory (which means opening the "circular roads" to Palestinians; I can explain what these are if anyone asks) and d) establishing the right of return for all Palestinians. The latter means acknowledging the Palestinian claim on every home, factory, orchard, grove, and plot of land. It is true that given the Palestinian diaspora, many if not most will not choose to return, but they have a legal claim that should be settled with compensation. Let the U.S. aid go to that instead of Israeli nuclear weapons!

A democratic, secular Palestine is a prerequisite to peace. Not a two-state solution. The thing about legitimate nationalist claims to usurped land is that while they may ebb and flow with respect to their intensity, even from generation to generation, but human history shows that they seem to live on in national groups almost like a gene. Even with a two-state solution, that key around the neck of my friend Lana will live on, and some day one of her children or children's children will want to know why the house was stolen, and the next thing you know the struggle will be renewed. That's why a democratic, secular Palestine -- absent Zionism -- with Arabs and Jews living together is the only answer.

I agree that two states is not the solution. It should be one secular country with Jews, Christians, and Muslims living together and without fear of one group dominating another.

[smc]

Originally Posted by ila

Are you serious that Israel caused the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt?

My goodness, ila, calm down. That's not what I wrote at all. I never used the word "caused" nor would I have done so. I agreed with Randolph that the issues are linked, i.e., the Arab Spring and the history from which it springs, and the presence of the Zionists in the region.

Originally Posted by ila

You know that I don?t live around the corner from so I couldn't seriously be trying to move the discussion away from this site.

This is why I think perhaps calming down is called for. Did you really think I thought you were trying to move the discussion away? After all we've talked about here? I mean, jeez ...!

Originally Posted by ila

To dismiss the Moabites, the Canaanites, the Edomites, etc. as abstract is to ignore the history of the whole region. One cannot properly put everything into the context of today?s problems without first understanding the past.

Palestinians and Jews have lived in the area of Israel/Palestine for millennia. This article gives insight to their lineage. Given that they both have a record of continuously living there for so long why should Jews not be allowed to live there?

I agree with your statement about context, and I did not dismiss that context. But remember we are talking about Zionists beginning in the 19th century taking political action and ultimately colonizing a region in which they hadn't lived for centuries.

Originally Posted by ila

I agree that two states is not the solution. It should be one secular country with Jews, Christians, and Muslims living together and without fear of one group dominating another.

I'm glad you agree. The Zionists are vehemently opposed to anything that might allow Palestinian Arabs ever to constitute a majority.

[randolph]

Originally Posted by ila

I agree that two states is not the solution. It should be one secular country with Jews, Christians, and Muslims living together and without fear of one group dominating another.

If the mayhem of the past is any indication, these three religious groups would much rather kill each other off than live together. Ironically, they all derive from the Abrahamic source. They believe in the same God, just different names. Christian sects hate each other and Sunnis and Shia Muslims hate each other. The Abrahamic religions are deeply flawed, they are intolerant. Each one firmly believes that them and only them have the word of God. Centuries of conflict are the result. It is very unfortunate that the middle east has lots of oil. Otherwise it would have remained a land of sheep herders and camel jockeys.

[smc]

Originally Posted by randolph

If the mayhem of the past is any indication, these three religious groups would much rather kill each other off than live together. Ironically, they all derive from the Abrahamic source. They believe in the same God, just different names. Christian sects hate each other and Sunnis and Shia Muslims hate each other. The Abrahamic religions are deeply flawed, they are intolerant. Each one firmly believes that them and only them have the word of God. Centuries of conflict are the result. It is very unfortunate that the middle east has lots of oil. Otherwise it would have remained a land of sheep herders and camel jockeys.

Randolph, are you aware that the term "camel jockey" is racist and derogatory, and has always been characterized as such. It is an affront to the seriousness of this discussion that you used the term here, and an insult to every Arab member of this site (and there are quite a few).

[ila]

Originally Posted by randolph

If the mayhem of the past is any indication, these three religious groups would much rather kill each other off than live together. Ironically, they all derive from the Abrahamic source. They believe in the same God, just different names. Christian sects hate each other and Sunnis and Shia Muslims hate each other. The Abrahamic religions are deeply flawed, they are intolerant. Each one firmly believes that them and only them have the word of God...

You are only partly right. Muslims, Christians, and Jews all believe in the same deity, they just use different names.

Christian sects do not hate each other. They may disagree, but hate is too strong a word. The religious wars between Christians ended long ago.

The Sunnis, Shias, Alawites, etc. have been known to disagree with each other and in some cases it has led to violence.

The three Abrahamic religions are not intolerant. It is some of the people and some of the religious leaders that are intolerant. One should read the religious texts to properly understand this. The Koran even states that Christians and Jews are people of the book. Likewise it is only some people and some religious leaders that have decided that their, and only their, religion has the word of God.

The great enemy to religious understanding is illiteracy. If people were taught to read their own and other religious books they would see how much each religion has in common with the others.

Back in the middle ages the Catholic church kept most citizens illiterate as it is easier to control the masses if they are not able to read for themselves. It is the same thing now in some Muslim countries where the religious leaders let only a select few learn to read and those too are only taught the leaders' version and not the original full Koran.